Blair backs diplomacy to halt N. Korea's nuclear drive

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday the North Korean nuclear crisis should be handled with special sensitivity rather than military threats because of a different history from Iraq's tussles with the United Nations.

Mr Blair arrived in Beijing late yesterday after holding talks that focused largely on North Korea with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. He was due to meet China's leaders today.

Roh, speaking to reporters after the talks, said the standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions was more stable than it was six months ago, despite reports that Pyongyang was reprocessing plutonium to make atomic bombs.

Blair said that if North Korea gave up its nuclear ambitions, the international community would step up with "help in making a transition to a different kind of country".

"We cannot have a situation in which North Korea not merely continues to develop a nuclear weapons programme but proliferates and exports that technology around the world," Blair said.

"So, this is a situation which, I think, has to be handled with a special sensitivity," he added, speaking in the gardens of Roh's presidential Blue House compound.

Blair traveled to Seoul from Japan on his US and Asia tour, which has been dramatically overshadowed by the suicide in Britain of a government adviser on Iraq's weapons.

Asked why he did not make the same threats of military action against North Korea that were made to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Mr Blair said "there is not the same history" of UN resolutions calling for Iraq to disarm.

"But I can assure you, there is the same sense of urgency." The United States went to war against Iraq over Saddam Hussein's yet-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction. But Washington is so far seeking a peaceful solution leading to North Korea's dismantling of its nuclear weapons programme, while not ruling out a military option.